


Christmas Present

by Oparu



Series: When the bell tolls three [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 13:57:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13191519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oparu/pseuds/Oparu
Summary: Killian and Mal bake cookies, wrangle children and make it to Snow's Christmas party. (total fluff)





	Christmas Present

**Author's Note:**

  * For [demisexualemmaswan](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=demisexualemmaswan).



> sort of a repost because this worked better as a series, for demisexualemmaswan, for Once Upon a Festive Gifting. 
> 
> Mentions of past romantic Captain Dragon

“Emma said we just need to put these in the oven, and start these.”

Maleficent peers over the cookbook. “Mexican wedding cakes?”

“They’re one of Snow’s favorites and it’s Snow’s Christmas party.”

The way she rolls her eyes makes him smirk. “And we’re going.”

“We’re the hangers on.”

She chuckles and refills his coffee. “How hard can it be? You’ve sailed across oceans, and I’ve made spells. This…is easier than that.” She only fills her own mug and stares at the recipe, sighing.

“We can do this.”

“We cooked last year,” Mal reminds him. “But that was a turkey and we cheated.”

“I don’t think using dragon fire was cheating, everyone loved that turkey.” He sips his coffee and stares at the recipe. “Powdered sugar. That’s the blue bag.”

“And this is the cup.”

They manage to measure that, and melted butter, and even though he thinks one of his daggers might be sharper than Emma’s big knife, they get the nuts chopped and the spices in. Robin’s up from her nap by then, wanting to know what they’re doing with all the seriousness of a three-year-old.

They give her one gingerbread house to decorate and a placemat to catch all the frosting she won’t get on the cookie.

Ara’s up too by the time they get the cookies in the oven and since she started toddling around like a little drunken sailor last month, she takes more watching. He sets her up with the bottom cabinet, which has all the tupperware and the pots and pans, she can’t hurt those.

He steps around her while they get the first batch of the funny beige little balls Snow likes so much in the oven. The next ones sound better, because he does like peanut butter but nothing on Emma’s Christmas cookie list has much of any redeeming nutritional value.

David arrives with Neal while they’ll putting chocolate kisses on the peanut butter cookies (something Robin loves watching). Neal leaves his boots in the living room and his coat on the kitchen floor and he’s so excited by the cookies that he accidentally hits Ara with his elbow and Mal scoops her up when she starts to cry.

“You can roll those in sugar.”

“Daddy, I’m hungry,” Neal says.

“We could eat cookies,” Robin adds and they both look at David, expecting him to fold.

Killian chuckles and opens his arms so Mal can hand him the baby. Luckily, she doesn’t talk yet, just wriggles a little until she settles down.

“You can each have an orange, but you have to sit at the table.”

“But daddy, I want a cookie.”

“Why can’t we eat cookies?”

Mal and Killian glance at each other, smirking over the baby’s head while Robin and Neal turn their combined efforts onto David. To his credit he doesn’t fold. The cookies end up mostly covered in sugar appropriately. The gingerbread trees are all different colors, and they’ll probably stick in the box. Robin can’t find her hat. It’s not in the living room, not in the kitchen, they haven’t really had her anywhere else, but one of Emma’s hats will work, even if it’s too big.

“It’s Emma’s hat,” she announces to Neal.

“This is my hat.”

“My hat is losted.”

“Emma has lots of hats, it’ll be okay.”

Emma, Regina and Zelena arrive together, still arguing about something that happened in the Mayor’s office. Emma kisses him hello and takes the baby to her car seat while Regina gently insists that the cookies are fine. They did a good job. He ends up in the backseat of Regina’s car, sitting across from Maleficent with the baby between them.

The baby sucks on her stuffed toy dragon and in the front seat their wives talk about work, and the town, and how the New Year’s party Granny wants to throw that’ll be so big they’ll have to do overflow in the town hall. Ara hands him her stuffed dragon and toys with his fingers instead.

Mal looks over the baby, smiling at him with such joy that it can’t just be the cookies.

“What?”

“We’ve come a long way from the woods.”

The woods? He has to think for a moment, running through all of his memories. They haven’t been in the woods together for years, decades, possibly a century.

That woods.

That one time.

He laughs, and she joins in and they shakes their heads, because over a hundred years ago, in another world, they  kept each other warm, when they were alone. Now they have wives, and family, Snow to worry about how they’re living their lives, David to offer advice about gardening and how to fix the showerhead in the upstairs bathroom, Robin and Neal to go through their pockets looking for sweets and the baby.

He was so skeptical when Mal and Regina asked him and Emma to be her godparents. He knows nothing about babies, but the little dragon crawled into his heart.

“What are you two laughing about back there?” Emma turns over her shoulder, looking back at them.

“How far we’ve come.” They share a glance and Mal nods.

“You can tell them.”

“Or you could.”

“Mal?” Regina’s tone makes Mal smirk all the more.

“We knew each other.”

“Knew each other?” Emma asks, eyebrows up.

Killian knows he shouldn’t blush, but he can’t help up. “Not really, barely on a first name basis.”

“Actually, I only knew your first name.”

“You only have a first name.”

“It was Yule, very dark, the snow was heavy,” Mal begins, stroking the baby’s cheek. “Killian was lost in the woods.”

“I was there to obtain an artefact a dragon had stolen.”

“Dragons do not steal.”

Regina laughs at that. “Oh of course not, everything is yours once you start hoarding it.”

Emma looks from him to Mal and smiles. “So you were there to steal something Mal had already stolen.”

“And I stole it from a tyrant, so who knows who it really belonged to.”

“And that’s not the point.”

“He was frozen, and I warmed him up.”

Regina snorts, pulling to stop in the farmhouse’s driveway. “I know how that part of your magic works.”

“Wait–” Emma shakes her head. “You, and Maleficent.”

“It was more than a century ago-”

“And we were very lonely-”

“It meant nothing.”

“Though it was nice.”

Regina opens the car door and helps Mal out, lifting her chin to kiss her. “I’m glad it was nice.”

Emma leans on the car as he takes lifts the baby out of the car seat. She’s fast asleep in her snowsuit, and he meets Emma’s eyes over her head. “You and Maleficent.”

He shrugs. “She’s very beautiful.”

“She is–” Emma flushes a little. “Okay. So, now you’re friends.”

“Now we’re happy,” he says, shutting the car door. “We have love, family, all the things we were missing back then. We had each other for a moment and it–”

“I’m not jealous,” Emma promises, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him over the sleeping toddler between them. Mal and Regina head inside, arm in arm with the box of cookies. She runs her eyes over Maleficent and looks back at him. “Maybe a little, but not in the bad way.”

They take off their coats and hand the baby over so Regina can pull her free from her snowsuit.

She smiles at him. “I knew, and she knows,” she says, tilting her head towards Mal. “She was so isolated back then.”

“We all were, in different ways.”

Regina pats his shoulder and scoops up Ara, who’s half awake now. “And now it seems like we never get a moment alone. There’s a crisis, or a town meeting, or the baby needs something.”

“She’s my favorite kind of crisis.”

“If only the worst of it was babies.”

Across the living room, Mal and Emma clink glasses and laugh. Robin and Neal run circles around the tree and the pile of presents. Snow and David arrange the cookies on the table and it’s home. It’s warm, of body, and heart, because now he’s home. They all are.


End file.
